PER4025 - Key Concepts in Global Religions

Objectives:

Assessment tasks are designed to enable students to demonstrate the Learning and Employability outcomes for the relevant level of study. Level Learning Outcomes are embedded in the assessment task(s) at that level. This enables a more integrated view of overall student performance at each level.

Content:

This module will introduce you to a variety of religious thought from across the globe. It will cover several major (and minor) religions, such as Judaism, Islam, Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, Daoism, and Confucianism, and other similar traditions, as well as the various divisions within these belief systems. There will also be a lecture on atheism. You will study both the practices and beliefs of each tradition, whilst examining either a preeminent thinker (such as the Dominican Catholic philosopher and theologian St Thomas Aquinas) or a central concept (such as anatta, ‘no-self’, within the Buddhist tradition) within each tradition in particular detail. This will provide you with an overview of the major global religions, an awareness of the various points of agreement and disagreement between them, including shared themes, practices and underlying concepts. Issues of philosophy, ethics, theology, and spiritual practice will all be discussed as well as their impact on contemporary believers and society. Your digital assessment will allow you to develop your digital skills whilst also allowing you to examine one of the religions or thinkers in greater detail, and your integrated assessment will allow you to bring the various topics you have examined throughout your first year into dialogue with each other.

Learning and Teaching Information:

The course will use a blend of teaching and learning methods. This will include lecture style presentations, short student-led presentations and seminar discussion. Guidance on reading and activities in preparation for each session will be given, and learning will be supported where appropriate by VLE and other electronic resources. Guidance on relevant digital techniques and research and essay-writing will be embedded in the learning and teaching process throughout the module and may also be supported by tutorial guidance on assessments.

You will be taught using LTU’s multimodal approach to teaching. Your learning will be divided into three stages:

Preparation: You will be given clear tasks to support you in preparing for live, in-person teaching. This may include watching a short, pre-recorded lecture (or other open educational resource), reading a paper or text chapter, finding resources to discuss with your peers in class, reading and commenting on a paper or preparing other material for use in class. Your Module Tutor will give you information to help you understand why you are completing an activity and how this will be built on during live, in-person teaching.

Live: All your live, in-person teaching will be designed around active learning, providing you with valuable opportunities to build on preparation tasks and interact with staff and peers, as well as helping you to deepen your understanding, apply knowledge and surface any misunderstandings.

Post: Follow-up activities will include clear opportunities for you to check understanding and apply your learning to a new situation or context. These activities will also be a source of feedback for staff that will inform subsequent sessions.

Lectures/Seminars
Hours: 24
Intended Group Size: 30

Guided independent study
Hours: 126

Further details relating to assessment
Digital artefact: the student can create an audio and/or visual recording (or other digital artefact by negotiation) on a focussed subject related to the module content. This can be done in pairs or small groups as well as individually.

Integrated Assessment: students create a PowerPoint presentation on a theme agreed by the programme team relevant to the areas of philosophy, ethics and religion.

Assessment:

001 Digital artefact; audio and/or visual artefact 10 min or equiv.; mid/late semester 2 80%
002 Integrated assessment; presentation; 5 min; end of semester 2 20%

Fact File

Module Coordinator - Richard Playford
Level - 4
Credit Value - 15
Pre-Requisites - NONE
Semester(s) Offered - 4S2

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